When customers buy product items from various merchants in these merchants' retails environments, such as retail outlets, shopping centers, stores, etc., only a handful of payment methods is available to the customers. Typical examples include credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, checks, and cash. Each one of these payment methods has some drawbacks from cost and/or convenience perspectives. For example, credit cards bear substantial processing fees, while debit cards require availability of funds and sometimes involve surcharges as well. Checks and cash transactions are slow and require additional processing and/or handling. All these drawbacks interfere with retail transactions and add some level of dissatisfaction.
At the same time, a customer typically visits the same group of stores repeatedly, and these payment transaction fees tend to accumulate. While some stores try to issue their own credit-like account systems and employ banks to help them in this endeavor (e.g., Sears—Chase VISA), many stores are simply too small to build and operate systems similar to the ones provide by the major credit card companies and/or banks. Furthermore, a typical customer repeatedly visits multiple retail outlets. Requiring the customer to continuously carry multiple retail cards (or other security/transactional devices) each one being specific to only one of these outlets may be difficult, if not unreasonable. For example, a typical customer may use a few gas stations (e.g., depending on his location), a few grocery stores (e.g., depending on preferences), a few electronic stores (e.g., depending on current sales and promotions). Complexities introduced by store specific account systems may quickly offset any costs savings or inconvenience associated with traditional methods of payments and may make the overall experience even worse.